Welcome back to the Breakout Business English podcast.
My name is Chris.
I'm a business English and communication coach and I've personally worked with over 1000 international professionals, just like you, to improve the way that they communicate in English at work.
Thank you so much for listening and for your time.
I know how valuable it is.
And our topic today is saying no.
Okay, so we're trying a new format today.
As always, I'm interested to know what you think.
And I absolutely welcome any feedback you'd like to give me.
I've got a couple of podcast formats that I move between each episode episode, so hopefully this will be one to add to the list.
Today we're going to jump into a communication story from Apple, a longtime leader in their consumer electronics market.
We're going to hear what happened at the company and then we'll discuss some of the more interesting vocabulary and grammar points from the story.
I hope you find it useful and let's get started with chapter one.
The problem with too many priorities.
It's 1997 and Apple is in trouble.
The company that once defined innovation has become overextended.
Sales are down.
Teams are disconnected.
And the organization is spread too thin.
Inside the company, everyone is busy, but no one's aligned.
Different departments are developing competing products.
Marketing messages are inconsistent.
Decision-making has become slow and fragmented.
Apple is trying to please everyone, and in the process, it seems to be losing its identity.
When Steve Jobs returns to the company, he immediately recognizes the problem.
There's no strategic clarity, no single vision that people can rally behind.
He sits through presentations, reviews product roadmaps and listens to endless discussions about features, formats and a fragmented range of new products.
And then, in one leadership meeting, he decides to reset everything.
Jobs walks to the whiteboard and draws a large two-by-two grid of four squares and simply says we're going to focus on four things.
A consumer desktop, a consumer laptop, a professional desktop, and a professional laptop.
That's it.
Everything else is deprioritized, suspended, or cancelled.
The room goes quiet.
Some executives are shocked.
Others feel relieved.
Because for the first time in years, Apple suddenly has focus.
Jobs isn't being ruthless.
He's being clear.
He's showing that leadership communication isn't about having all the answers.
It's about creating alignment, filtering out the noise and giving people a framework for decision-making.
And that moment, that whiteboard moment, becomes the turning point for Apple's comeback.
Okay, the first half of our story there.
Maybe you've heard about Steve Jobs' return to Apple before.
There are definitely a couple of fantastic movies about it, that communicate these events well.
Now, let's jump into some of that vocabulary.
We heard two different forms of the verb to align.
At the beginning, we heard everyone's busy, but nobody's aligned.
Everyone's busy, but nobody's aligned.
And near the end we heard it's about creating harmony, alignment and giving people a framework for decision making.
It's about creating alignment and giving people a framework for decision making.
So what does it mean to be aligned?
That's the adjective form to be aligned.
Similar to to be tired, to be excited, to be interested, to be bored.
You can also be Well.
Before we talk about the professional and business context for this word, let's mention the literal and first definition.
Have you ever tried to put a screen protector on your phone?
You know what I'm talking about, right?
You get a brand new phone, very expensive.
You're going to have it for a couple of years and you want to make sure that that the screen doesn't get scratched.
So you put a protective layer on the screen, sometimes glass, sometimes plastic.
It usually comes with a couple of wipes to clean the screen.
So you start by trying to get every little piece of dust removed.
Then you need to put the screen protector on.
You look at the sides. and make sure that they are perfectly mirroring the phone's screen.
You make sure that the side of the screen protector lines up and is perfectly aligned with the screen itself.
Otherwise, you're going to be looking at a misaligned piece of plastic on there for likely, the next couple of years.
So that's the literal meaning, to protect. get two things to be in a straight line with each other.
So what does this mean when we apply it to work and to our teams?
If people on a team are aligned on something, it means that they are heading in the same direction.
They understand the team's goals and how they're going to get there.
If teams are aligned, then they're working towards the same vision for a project and they also likely know why they're doing that.
They know what the problems are and they've all agreed on the same solutions.
If you have good alignment between colleagues, then nobody is going to be surprised by the decisions of anyone else.
No one is going to take a course of action that causes problems for another colleague, team or project.
That's why it's important to align all of your teams, colleagues, goals, and objectives.
It's also why I ask the guy in the phone shop to put the screen protector on my phone, because I don't know about you, but I can never get that quite right.
Let's talk about two related terms now.
We're going to talk about the idiom to be spread too thin and the adjective to be fragmented.
So, one more time, that's the idiom to be spread too thin and the adjective to be fragmented.
Near the beginning of the story, we heard, The organization is spread too thin.
And a few seconds later, we heard decision-making has become slow and fragmented.
Okay, let's talk about breakfast.
And more specifically, toast.
I don't always have toast with my breakfast, but it's definitely something that you'll find me eating standing up in the kitchen when I don't have much time to spare.
If you make yourself a slice of toast and you add maybe butter or jam, then one thing you don't want to do is to spread it too thin.
You probably won't be able to taste it and it would have no real effect or impact on your meal.
In the same way, we can talk about spreading yourself too thin.
This means to take on so many tasks or responsibilities that you become ineffective at all of them.
Or we can talk about spreading a team or a company too thin in the same way.
So, just like taking a small amount of butter and trying to use it for two whole slices of toast is going to result in a very thin layer on top.
Taking a team, giving it too many tasks, or maybe a company and giving it too many products, is going to result in lower quality, lower attention to detail and likely also lower customer satisfaction.
Also, as always, idioms are definitely appropriate for professional communication, but are generally considered slightly informal.
So If you're taking an English test like IELTS, it's best to save these for the speaking part of the exam.
To be fragmented is a more formal word, however.
And for this one, I want to first ask you about the noun.
What is a fragment?
A fragment.
If I tell you that I found a fragment of something, then...
What am I talking about?
I think one of the most famous fragments of all time is the Rosetta Stone.
This is a piece of a much larger piece of stone that had lots of writing on it in multiple languages.
It's currently sitting in the British Museum in London.
We call it a fragment because it's a smaller piece of something larger.
It's not the whole thing.
If I overhear you telling your manager about a project, maybe I only hear a fragment of what you were telling her.
I didn't hear the whole thing.
Or perhaps I only had time to read a fragment of a long report before a meeting.
So if a fragment is a part of something often a small part of something then what does it mean for something to be fragmented?
To be fragmented.
If something is fragmented, it is divided into many different parts.
A novel is or a story that's very fragmented, might have lots of different characters and locations and other smaller stories within it.
And if you drop a plate onto the floor then it might become fragmented and break into lots of different fragments.
At work that means a team or project is working on too many different things, especially things that are unrelated.
Maybe my fragmented workday has me meeting with six different teams about 10 different projects, or I might have 15 different staff telling me different things about a project.
When we say that Apple's decision-making had become slow and fragmented...
It means that too many people were needed to make decisions.
Too many department heads, experts, and leaders were needed to finalize a single decision.
I also described Apple's product range as fragmented later in the story.
This means that they had too many products.
Maybe their products were overlapping too.
You might find that two products might have been the best solution for one customer and one use case, which is never good when you're trying to spend a lot of money on computing products.
This fragmentation was likely the result of different teams not being aligned, and definitely not a good thing for their customers.
That is the noun, fragmentation.
And if your approach to improving your English is too fragmented, then maybe we can work together.
My full-time job is helping international professionals who use English at work to improve their communication skills.
So if you need English to do your job but you don't speak it natively, then I would really like to meet you.
If you're interested in booking some time to meet with me through one-to-one video calls just you and me then you can go to breakoutbusinessenglishcom that's the title of the podcast, breakoutbusinessenglishcom and find out more.
Starting on our first call, we can focus on the specific opportunities that you personally have to improve your English and communication skills and the mistakes that you make most often or cause the biggest problems with your communication.
And right now you can use the code PODCAST30 that's PODCAST30 at checkout to get a 30 discount off your first booking of 30, 45 or 60 minutes.
Sometimes my calendar gets a little busy, so if you have trouble finding a time that works for you, you can always send me a message through the contact page on the website and ask if I have any time to fit you in.
I've worked with over 1000 non-native English-speaking professionals a number that is growing every day, from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders, to help them achieve their goals, and I look forward to meeting you.
Equally.
If you're interested in seeing the way that I work and the way that we can work together, head over to the Breakout Business English YouTube channel and you can see some analyses there of different business leaders and world leaders.
I uploaded an analysis of Viktor Orbán's English the Hungarian Prime Minister's English skills.
That went up, I think, a couple of days ago, maybe yesterday, so it's brand new.
Feel free to take a look at that.
Let's jump into chapter two, the power of clear communication.
After that meeting, everything changed.
By reducing the noise, Jobs gave Apple room to think clearly again.
Fragmented projects that didn't fit the new direction were shut down and teams were restructured around just four core products.
It wasn't just a business decision.
It was a communication reset.
Every employee now understood what mattered.
The company's internal messaging became consistent.
Product development and marketing were finally aligned.
Within a year, Apple launched the iMac.
Simple, user-friendly, and instantly recognizable.
Its message was clear.
Creativity made easy.
That same clarity went on to define the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.
Each one had a single story, a single purpose, and a single message.
Steve Jobs' approach proved that communication is key to strategy and not just an afterthought.
He showed that effective leaders don't just share information, they simplify it.
They remove distractions, clarify priorities, and communicate boundaries with confidence.
Okay.
Hopefully this part of the podcast sounds well put together.
Hopefully it sounds well planned and like I've put a lot of care and effort into it.
However, if it doesn't seem like that, then maybe it sounds like an afterthought.
An afterthought.
In the story we heard, Steve Jobs' approach proved that communication is key to strategy and not just an afterthought.
His approach proved that communication is key to strategy and not an afterthought.
An afterthought is something that, well, you think of after or you add later.
It suggests that the product of your communication, the product of your idea is of lower quality.
If I arrive at the office for a Christmas party with all the staff and I'm supposed to bring a gift for someone on the team maybe we're doing Secret Santa, where you get told that you need to buy a gift for a specific colleague then maybe I've put a lot of thought into it and bought that gift days ago, if not weeks, in advance.
However, if you get a car air freshener from me for Christmas, then you can guess that I picked this up at the gas station on the way to work and it was really just an afterthought.
Unless you really like car air fresheners, then maybe I put some thought into it.
We usually hear this in sentences that show upset or disapproval at something or that warn against leaving things until the last minute.
For instance...
I might say I want our social media posts to be really high quality and not just an afterthought.
Okay, let's talk about noise.
I said let's talk about noise.
Can someone please turn that down?
Okay, thank you.
So, as you probably know, we use the word noise... to talk about anything that you can hear.
Especially sounds, however, that are unwanted.
I'm sure that a lot of parents think that the music their children listen to is just noise.
And if you've ever had construction work going on outside your office, you've likely had to close the window to try to deal with the noise.
In our story, we heard...
By reducing the noise, Jobs gave Apple room to think clearly again.
Also in the first half of our story we heard he's showing that leadership communication isn't about having all the answers.
It's about creating alignment and filtering noise.
It's about creating alignment and filtering out the noise.
A great way to think about noise, however, is to describe it as anything that doesn't matter.
Anything that is unimportant.
If your company is making 350 products, then reducing this to just a handful is going to allow you to stop focusing on the noise and just hear the sound of those important core products.
The opposite of noise is often known as signal.
Signal is what is important.
It's critical to your mission.
It's what you're supposed to be working on and what is the top of your to-do list.
Noise, on the other hand, is tasks that take up your time but don't actually get you close to your goals.
It's information that might be interesting but doesn't actually have an impact on your work or what you are trying to achieve.
For Apple noise was marketing trends, maybe competitors' actions and maybe even ideas from their own teams that distract from their core mission.
At work, You want to focus on what moves you closer to your objectives.
And remember that everything else is often just noise.
Maybe this sounds familiar.
Maybe you've heard of the 80-20 principle or the Pareto principle, that 80 of the output comes from 20 of the input.
And we can apply this to lots of different things.
I think a good way to think about this is that 80% of everything is noise and 20% is signal.
And that 20% will create 80% of your quality.
So don't forget, was that confusing?
Was that a confusing way to finish this week's podcast?
I think it might've been.
Well, maybe.
You can tell me.
Tell me in a review.
Don't forget that if you would like to work with me to discuss any of the ideas, vocabulary or grammar etc.
In today's episode, then you can book a session to work with me on your English communication skills by going to breakoutbusinessenglishcom that's the title of the podcast, breakoutbusinessenglishcom or clicking the link in the show notes.
And use the code PODCAST30.
That's podcast30 at checkout to get a 30% discount off your first booking.
I've worked with well over 1000 non-native English-speaking professionals, from new graduates up to CEOs and even some government leaders, to help them to achieve their goals.
And I look forward to meeting you.
And I'd love to hear your opinion on this new format, this new style.
Did you enjoy it?
Or would you rather I stayed with the formats that I've used before?
Or maybe you'd like more like this.
If you're listening on Apple podcasts, then I invite you to leave a review.
Every review really helps me out and helps to push the podcast to new listeners and to grow the show.
If you found this podcast useful and you think there are some valuable things in here, then feel free to write a couple of kind words, and I thank you in advance.
Also, that is a great place to request a topic for a future podcast.
And between episodes of the podcast.
You can get videos every couple of days on Instagram and TikTok, but mainly these days I am on YouTube.
Just search for Breakout Business English.
Also, If there's a topic that you'd like to hear me talk about or discuss, then again, that is a great place to leave your ideas.
Leave me a message or a comment on one of my YouTube videos and I look forward to hearing from you.
That is it for today.
Thank you so much for listening and for your time.
I know how valuable it is and I really appreciate and respect your choice to spend at least some of it with this podcast.
I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you again next time on the Breakout Business English Podcast.
